Interpersonal Communication in Retail

Abstract

Communication is a very important part of a manager's job. Every manager communicates with their team, colleagues and his/her manager. Effective communication in the organization is the basis for achieving the goals of the organization, motivating people and creating trust environment. If a manager is able to motivate his/her team, people are willing to do more for the company and themselves. Also, a trust environment supports achieving the company goals, working environment in a team and the whole company culture as well. People communicate nonstop, they share their ideas, opinions, discuss basic daily issues, talk to friends and family members and similar. Even if they do not talk, they communicate because they send nonverbal signals to other people. The best way of communication is face-to-face in real-time. Nowadays, there are many ways how to communicate using modern technologies. These technologies can help if there are long distances between people, e.g., for conference calls with more countries, but this paper focuses on interpersonal face-to-face communication. Communication should enable smooth cooperation with others, e.g., by active listening, managers may get more information about their team members than just listening without paying attention. No less important is non-verbal communication in the interpersonal communication process between two or more people. Different signals may improve added value to the whole conversation, highlight the main information, keep people interested in listening, and tell more than just expressing by using words. Communication is a complex process. Many researchers spend their lives researching this field and looking for ways of effective communication. Everybody can learn how to communicate more effectively and lead the team towards the company goals. The main goal of this paper is the identification of the effectiveness of communication in an international retail organization and to cover the gap in the literature that does not focus on retail. The research took place in its branch in Germany. This research used a questionnaire consisting of questions where respondents indicated answers on a Likert scale Based on the research, it is possible to point out the strengths and weaknesses in the communication process between managers and subordinates. This paper shows how employees and managers communicate and their mutual satisfaction. 48 employees participated in the research of a total of 187 employees, which means the return rate of the questionnaire is 25.67%. The communication process in the selected organization is at a good level, however, with some deficiencies. Among the positive aspects, there is an openness in interpersonal communication and in the department as well, moreover a clear and unambiguous communication of the manager, active listening and understanding of messages that support the effective communication process in the organization. On the other hand, there are some deficiencies, for instance, employees lack more feedback, another issue occurs in the communication process between the manager and his/her team, which is about information flow, where only about a quarter of the information the employees receive from their manager. The benefit of this research is seen for HR professionals, managers and scholars who may get an overview of the pros and cons of interpersonal communication based on results from a questionnaire focused on the way of communication at the company and between supervisor and his/her team and team members.